


Halcyon, Departing

by PaperRevolution



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Boarding School, Gen, Victorian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:57:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperRevolution/pseuds/PaperRevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. England, September 1853. War is brewing overseas; the industrial revolution roils in the cities, and in the small English town of Oakham, nine young boys begin to change and grow in ways beyond their control. Jehan Prouvaire and his friends cannot stay safe inside their halcyon bubble forever, and times are moving faster than any of them - save perhaps fierce, solemn Enjolras - realise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. September 1853

**Author's Note:**

> In order to avoid confusion, I have kept the characters’ surnames the same. I have, however, given them Anglicised Christian names in keeping with the story’s setting

We find ourselves, reader, in a small town; Oakham. Not auspicious, but with its own sense of muted stateliness nevertheless. There is a church with a spire whose taper pierces the sky quite impressively, and a little colonnade of shops, marching solidly side by side, bracketing a cobbled street. There are schools, also; two for the younger children, and one for the older boys, a particularly well-respected place; a Public School, no less, named for the little town itself. Oakham School is where we are to find our young protagonist, every day until just after five o' clock, when the sky begins to darken and his mother sends Lant in the hansom to retrieve him.

But I am misleading you, I fear, for you see, on the day our story begins, young Prouvaire – a plain John who in an up-stir of youthful fancy has taken to calling himself Jehan – can be found not at school, but in the grand little manor house (little only in comparison to some of its more formidable brethren) that has been home to his family since long before he was born. The manor, all grey stone, arching windows and elaborate cornices, seemed to some of the villagers a small castle. To the Prouvaires, Lord and Lady Oakham and their aforementioned son, however, it was home. Spending more time looking at the house from within than from without, they were more accustomed to its warm fires, oriental rugs and the soft reddish gleam of polished mahogany furnishings, than they were to its less inviting exterior.

Today, the Viscount of Oakham; that is, the senior John Prouvaire, has taken the hansom to the neighbouring village to visit a charity school named Wellwood, of which he is a patron. Wellwood, insofar as the boy Jehan understands, is a place where boys less fortunate than himself, who have no families, or whose families are for whatever reason incapable of caring for them adequately, are sent in lieu of the workhouse, that they might better themselves. Seated by the window in the drawing room, a book open in his lap, Jehan considers this place. He pictures sombre, silent halls and row upon row of desks. Figures in grey, their heads bent, hard at work. A more modest version of his own school, where the students are paler and more worn. He wonders what it might be like to be at such a place. Would it be cold at night? What sort of books would these boys read?

This is what he is thinking of when Vickers, the lady's maid who attends his mother, steps smartly through the open door and says with her usual briskness:

“Master Jehan, your mother says you're to stop dawdling and join her in the parlour. Your aunt and uncle will be here soon.”

She sniffs, as though displeased with something – Jehan cannot think what – and leaves without another word. Reluctantly, he closes his book and gets to his feet, following her from the room.

Jehan's mother is a small woman – her son owes his rather diminutive stature to her – with bright eyes and a pointed little nose. Her fingers work busily at the pillowslip she is embroidering, and she looks up only for a moment as the boy enters and takes a chair diagonally across from hers.

“What have you been reading?” inquires the Lady of the house in such a mild tone that Jehan sees instantly, with no surprise, that Vickers had exaggerated her mistress' impatience.

“Only poems,” he gives her a small smile, but does not elaborate. They are not 'only' poems; not to him, but his mother likes to read, but only novels, and she would not be able to tell Blake from Byron.

Lady Oakham looks up again, fondly. “I do wish your father hadn't picked today to visit Wellwood,” she murmurs, “He's sure to be late for dinner.”

This is not the heart of the matter, Jehan knows. His mother is more anxious about what her sister will think of Lord Oakham's absence. Jehan's aunt, genial though she is, is nothing if not a gossip-monger; he knows this, with the surprising perceptiveness of a quiet boy who will speak volubly when called upon; when impassioned, but who for the most part is content just to listen.

His mother mistakes his silence for melancholy, the way mothers are often wont to do. “Are you not happy about the prospect of having your cousin close by?”

Jehan nods, affecting eagerness as best he can. It isn't that he dislikes Cousin George. It is just that he knows him only marginally, he feels. At school, he calls him Bahorel, and Cousin George calls him Prouvaire, and that is how they have come to know one another. 

Moreover – and this, he does not want to admit to himself – George Bahorel is the sort of boy Jehan ought to be. He plays cricket; he's often the instigator of bouts of fisticuffs in the schoolyard; he's obstreperous in the most winning manner possible. Bahorel is admired. Not revered, like Jehan's friend, Enjolras, but admired nevertheless. Jehan, puny Jehan with his books and his exemption from Games and his little bottle of foul-smelling emergency medicine, cannot hope to compete. And now that they are to live so near, surely Jehan's mother and his aunt will lose no time in beginning to compare the boys. To voice any of this would be absurd; akin almost to jealousy, so he holds his silence.

“Almost five o' clock,” observes his mother, “We had better go out to meet them. They'll be here soon enough.”

She rises, setting down her needlework, and Jehan, putting down his book, follows suit. This moment, now, filled with anticipation and unease – for the arrival of his cousin; for the coming school year – in equal parts, is what it is to be fourteen and affluent, languishing and accepting. He hopes for something to change, and all the while he fears it.

-o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

“The boys are disciplined adequately,” a portly schoolmaster assures Lord John Prouvaire, Viscount of Oakham. Mister Bragg, for that is the schoolmaster's name, bobs up and down on the balls of his feet, hands clasped tightly behind his back. The buttons of his shirt strain ominously.

The pair of them stand in a vast hall. In its vastness, and that alone, it is not unlike the hall envisioned that same day by Lord Oakham's son. There is a damp smell in the air, however – sharp and heavy; musty and fetid – that Jehan failed to imagine. The boys' clothes hang loose as rags, and, though they do indeed hunch over slates, the atmosphere is one of fear rather than industriousness. 

“They are given three meals a day,” Mister Bragg presses on, “Before each of which they're expected to give thanks to God. There're also prayers after morning victuals.”

Lord Oakham nods gravely. A tall man with a thick head of red-gold hair, a pair of wide-set blue eyes and an air of ineffable gravity, Jehan's father wields authority in a manner that Jehan knows he himself could never hope to achieve. He listens to Bragg's bleating, but it is quite plain from the intent look in his light eyes that he doubts the truth of what the other man is telling him.

Presently, however, a noise from the hall beyond attracts his attention. A boy is sitting very upright in his seat, his hand raised to beg a question. Another schoolmaster – this one taller; almost as tall as Lord Oakham, whose long, narrow nose and close-set eyes give him a somewhat weaselly appearance – abruptly halts in his pacing about the room to look at the boy.

“What is it?” he demands, and the boy lowers his arm hesitantly and leans forward slightly in his seat.

“It says here that all men are created equal,” the boy says. His voice is quiet, and yet it carries. Lord Oakham can hear him perfectly. “But that en't – I mean, that isn't true. If we're all equal, how come some of us got to be... How come some of us must be servants and get told what to do by other men? That's not equal. So... either God's a liar, or people en't – I mean, aren't following his will.”

There is a sharp intake of breath from both schoolmasters. A handful of boys dare to look up.

“Get up,” the weaselly schoolmaster's voice is very quiet.

The boy, clearly trying to keep from trembling, obeys, emerging from behind his desk and, knock-kneed with knowing dread, approaching the schoolmaster.

“Kneel,” commands the schoolmaster.

Having no choice, his hapless pupil complies, shoulders tensed. The schoolmaster retrieves from its place against the wall behind him a long, dully gleaming cane.

The first strike on the boy's back makes his body jerk reflexively, but he makes no sound. He bears his blows in silence as down they rain, the other boys looking on in an unabashed tumult of horrified pity and relief that they are not the ones kneeling on the cold floor. The boy bites his knuckles to mute his cries, but after a time, he can bear it no longer and a strangled noise breaks from him. The boy gulps in a frantic breath as the cane descends again.

“Stop!” Lord Oakham calls out. His greatcoat billows stiffly as he moves toward schoolmaster and student. The scene is some grotesque oil painting, the man with his cane suspended, face stretched taut; the boy doing his best to stifle a sob, head ducked, thin arms wrapped about his knees.

What Lord Oakham does next surprises everyone present.

“What's your name, boy?” he asks of the huddled figure. The head bobs up fractionally in surprise, but aside from that, the lad stays immobile. He is around the age of Lord Oakham's own son, perhaps; it is difficult to say. Brown hair, unkempt and much in need of cutting, hangs in his face.

Barely audible, the boy mumbles a reply.

Lord Oakham looks down at the pitiful creature. “It's alright,” he says, “I'm not here to hurt you. Tell me your name.”

This time, the boy looks up properly. His hazel eyes are huge in a hollow-cheeked face. His lips are chapped, and there is an angry welt above his right eye. He looks both younger and older than Jehan.

“Henry Feuilly,” says the boy in a little voice like dry leaves.

“And are you punished in this way often, Henry Feuilly?”

The boy's eyes are rounder than ever. “Y- n – yeh- Sometimes,” he concedes finally, returning to staring at the floor.

 

“I am sorry, my Lord,” Mr Bragg tells Oakham, “Feuilly asks too many questions.”

Lord Oakham holds up a hand, appearing to think for a moment. Then:

“We are, you know, in need of a hallboy,” says he at length, “How would you like to come and work for me, young Mister Feuilly?”

The boy stares.

“Lord Oakham,” Bragg splutters, “You cannot mean-”

Oakham's reply is grave. “I mean precisely what I say, Mister Bragg. I cannot, of course, help all of the boys here; not directly. But I wish to give this boy a chance, if it is his wish to take it.”

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

“Really, Grace, this is divine!”

“Oh, don't thank me; give your compliments to our cook. She did all the hard work.”

Jehan's aunt Lucetta loves to gush almost as much as she loves to gossip. Already, she has complimented the Prouvaires on a lamp in the drawing room, the wallpaper in the dining room, the quality of Lady Oakham's gown, and now the evening meal. Cousin George catches Jehan's eye, looking bored, discontented and restive.

More wine is poured. “How do you like the new house?” Lady Oakham enquires, “I hope you'll settle in well. The journey was painless, I hope?”

Mister Bahorel; Jehan's uncle, laughs heartily. “Oh, as painless as could be expected,” he rumbles, “But we're here, now. We ought to make the best of it.”

The disgruntled look on George's face shows Jehan exactly what he thinks of that idea.

Jehan keeps feeling as though his cousin is about to make some rude interruption, but he never does, and so Jehan is never able to make up his mind precisely how he feels about that idea. Cousin George is uncouth, so say most of the adults, and yet he is looked upon with a sort of nostalgic affection, as though he somehow reminds all present of their younger days. This makes Jehan curious, abstractedly, to see what the adults might say, were George to make one of his loud, unthinking remarks. But people, as we have learnt from Lord Oakham, rarely do what is expected of them, and so George Bahorel remains grudgingly silent. He positively seethes with that silence, shovelling food ferociously into his mouth. His mother gives him a languorous, vague smile and then returns to what she is saying. Jehan wishes fervently for the evening to draw to its close. He counts to ten, and then back down again, thinking that perhaps, by the time he has finished counting, it might be time at least for dessert.

He is placing down his knife and fork, unable to eat another bite, when the dining room door opens and Lant, the butler, ushers Lord Oakham into the room. The first footman draws back his seat, but Jehan's father, before sitting, clears his throat and says cordially:

“Oh, hello, Lucetta; Matthew – why, George, how much older you look! I hope you have been made quite welcome. My apologies for the delay. Grace, I have found us another hallboy, name of Feuilly. I think he will serve us quite well.”

Tutting, Jehan's mother shakes her head. “That is what you have been doing with yourself? Looking for servants! Haven't we quite enough to be going along with? Well, do sit down, won't you? You've held us up quite enough.”

She speaks with the brisk, feigned aggravation of wives, and her husband, true to his role, does his best to look sheepish and contrite. The footman pours wine for Lord Oakham, and the adults proceed to discuss various important people from London, and the impending possibility of a war in the Ottoman Islands. Jehan half-listens. He is thinking, you see, of two days from now, when school will begin again and he will apply himself to copybooks and Latin and Greek; when he will be reunited, after the long summer, with the friends he had made the previous year. He is not thinking of canes or beatings or war or debt; he carries the weight of neither the old nor the undermined. His troubles exist, for no one is ever entirely without troubles, but they are a child's pains. He is, for all intents and purposes, still a child. Fourteen, and waiting in the wings for the world to lift him up and do what it will with him.


	2. Chapter 2

On weekday mornings, having been deposited at the gates of Oakham School by the dutiful Lant, our young protagonist ceases to be Jehan and becomes Prouvaire. It is an important distinction to note, for where Jehan is perennially taciturn, Prouvaire, stimulated by the enquiring young minds of his friends, becomes lively; passionate, even. At home, Jehan is cosseted (“You mustn't coddle the boy so,” his grandmother has been known to tell his mother on more than one occasion). At school, though he is often made mockery of for his small, reedy frame and studious, faraway nature, he is also called upon to give opinions; pulled into the sort of discussions – at once both lively and weighty – that his father partakes of with his dinner guests, and that is refreshing. It awakes in him a sort of excitement both nervous and unabashed.

To understand Jehan's position at the school, we must first understand that there has always existed a sort of rivalry between the day pupils and boarders of Oakham. The day pupils, generally, are boys whose parents can ill afford to pay the extra fees required for boarding, and as such, the boarders are inclined to look down on the day boys for being from more modest backgrounds. The day pupils, in turn, see the boarders as being a priggish bunch. Jehan, being a day pupil and also the son of the Viscount, does not fit properly into either category. During his first term at the school, he was constantly pushed about; pelted with bits of chalk and small stones when the teachers were not looking; called a “precious little mummy's boy”. Additionally, he had on more than one occasion been chastised by the schoolmasters themselves for “not paying attention” - for sometimes, in the middle of a class, Jehan's attention would be caught by some small wonder outside the window and his attention would wander. One Mr Harding, in particular, found this infuriating, and had once made him wear the Dunce's Cap for an entire afternoon, because he failed to answer a question directed at him.

In short, his first few months at the school were miserable. Fortune favoured him, however, one late November afternoon, when one of the older boys happened to see him being taunted quite mercilessly by a small group, also all older than himself.

The older boy happened to be a Prefect, but unlike most of the other Prefects, he was well-liked. His name was Enjolras. He was a tall, angular boy with an abundance of pale gold hair and a face that could only be described as regal, with a strong, aquiline nose and high forehead. He looked proud, and indeed he was, but it was pride of a strident, and not haughty, sort. He had a curious mixture of authority and magnetism; a fierce nature, both driven and driving, which drew others to him. The other boys rallied around Enjolras; they drank in his every word. Jehan, up until that afternoon, had never spoken to him.

Enjolras, who had been walking briskly across the quad, paused in his tracks to look at the huddle of boys a little way to his left. He perceived that one of the boys, a deal smaller than the others, was shaking his head at something and looking almost desperate. His attention thus captured by the scene, Enjolras could not miss the way one of the larger boys shoved the young Prouvaire – so forcefully that he fell down on the cobbled ground. The others crowed with laughter, and Enjolras changed direction and strode towards them.

Jehan would not easily forget the way the other boy had looked, his mouth set in a grim line; his step purposeful and sure. A light flush had crept up on Enjolras' cheeks; perhaps the chill of the November day; perhaps the fervour of righteous indignation.

“Good afternoon,” said Enjolras, presently; curtly, and his schoolfellows froze.

“Hello, Enjolras,” returned the tallest boy, “We were just stopping to help Prouvaire. He fell, you see.”

Enjolras' eyes narrowed. “Do you think I'm blind, Keswick?” he asked the other boy, “I saw you push him.”

Keswick tilted his chin defiantly upwards. “What if I did?”

If he had expected to elicit a rise out of Enjolras, he would have been wrong, for the other boy's face was quite impassive. “Apologise to Prouvaire,” he told the unfortunate Keswick, “And leave him alone from now on, unless you'd like me to speak to Mister Needham about your conduct. I doubt Mister Needham wants thugs on his cricket team, don't you?”

Keswick's face reddened. “All right,” he muttered. He jerked a glance at Jehan, who by now had got to his feet and was staring down at the cobbles on which he had fallen as though he wished they might open up and swallow him. “Sorry, Prouvaire.”

And perhaps that would have been the end of that, had Enjolras not leant down to pick up a book Jehan had dropped.

“Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” said Enjolras, peering at the frontspiece. “Have you read his Emile?”

Cautiously, Jehan had shaken his head.

Enjolras returned his book to him. “My friend – Combeferre; maybe you know him, he's the Hawthorne prefect, and you're in Hawthorne, aren't you? - has a copy he might lend you, if you'd like. In fact,” and here, Enjolras paused, as though a thought had just occurred to him, “Perhaps you'd like to come and sit with us? Prefects are expected to sit together for lunch, but we're often joined by other boys.”

That was how Jehan came to know Enjolras, and to sit with him and his companions every lunchtime thereafter. School, instead of being something he dreaded, became something he rather looked forward to.

And these are the circumstances in which we find him at present – happy, for the most part. Still on the receiving end of jibes and prods from some of the other boys, but far less concerned by them, now. It is far easier to ignore one's enemies when one has friends to confide in, or simply to forget oneself with.

Today's lunchtime finds Jehan seated between Combeferre and a cheerful, rather rakish sort of boy named Courfeyrac. The latter having enquired after Bahorel's circumstances (“I say, Prouvaire, why doesn't your cousin board here any more, d'you know?”), Jehan is wondering how much he can appropriately tell his friends.

He settles, in the end, for innocence. “I don't know,” he says, and hopes the lie is quite convincing enough, “You're friendly with him, aren't you? Ask him yourself.”

Another boy; a lean, hard-faced youth with stringy dark hair, laughs dryly. “Well said, Prouvaire,” says he, whose name is Grantaire.

Jehan scans the hall in search of his cousin, but Bahorel has already left to partake of a particularly rough game of football – played with an old cricket-glove in lieu of a ball – out in the schoolyard. Quiet and unobtrusive as he is, Jehan is often privy to his parents' discussions without them truly realising it, and he knows the details of the Bahorel family's situation far better than he lets on. In truth, his uncle's gambling has driven the family into debts that they could only pay off by selling their London home and moving to a smaller place, and one nearer to their son's school so that they would no longer have to pay for his boarding there. As for how this intense period of upheaval has actually affected his cousin, Jehan can only guess, but he cannot imagine that it will have been at all easy for the other boy.

“Did you go with your father into the city, Combeferre?” Enjolras inquires presently, snapping Jehan out of his reverie. Combeferre, a bespectacled boy who, despite being only sixteen years old, reads in the same classes as Enjolras, nods, his expression turning grave.

“Gaskell does not exaggerate her descriptions of the mills,” he responds, and though his voice is calm; measured, something approaching distress sparks in his brown eyes. “The conditions those people are expected to work in... There was a child – a little girl,” his voice trembles ever so slightly, “whose hair caught in one of the machines she was crawling under to get hold of bits of cotton. She was screaming and it tore out her hair, and half her scalp with it, and no one did a thing. Scared, they were, of the overseer. Father was incensed, but he wouldn't say anything. When I asked him why, he said it doesn't pay to get involved with things like that; there will always be other children suffering in the same way, no matter what we do.”

Enjolras stiffens. “Your father ought to imagine how he might feel if he'd not the connections and the wherewithal to earn good money, and his own children had to go and work in the factories and mills. Would he be so eager to keep his silence if you were injured? No, I am sure he wouldn't.”

“He might,” says Combeferre mildly, “Some men do not speak out no matter how hard they are pushed.”

Jehan follows this exchange with a sort of horrified interest. Courfeyrac, on his other side, chimes in:

“If I'd been your father, Combeferre, I'd have walked over to that overseer and given him a good rap on the head with my cane.”

At this, Jehan cannot help laughing a little, but Enjolras and Combeferre are sombre.

“You'd have started a brawl in a factory?” Enjolras raises his eyebrows. “And achieved what, exactly?”

Courfeyrac laughs. “I'd have achieved a black eye and a bloody nose for that awful overseer,” he replies, “That'd teach him, wouldn't it?”

Enjolras is shaking his head, but it's Grantaire who says wryly:

“Oh, yes, I'm sure your little set-to would teach him to mend his ways, Courfeyrac. I'm sure he'd be a changed man. There's absolutely no conceivable way he could go back to behaving just as before the moment you'd gone, is there?” He laughs humourlessly, resting his elbows on the table in what Jehan's mother would call a most untoward manner. “There's no way to deal with people like that.”

“I disagree,” Enjolras counters, bluntly, “There are ways. Brawling with overseers is not one of them, but there are ways. There are unions; you've heard of the strikes?”

“And what do they prove?”

“They give people a voice.”

“But the masses -”

“You shouldn't call them that, Grantaire. That's the sort of word my father would use.”

“It's the sort of word everyone uses. You ought to get used to it.”

Enjolras flings up his hands in frustration. The shrill bell chimes, signalling the end of lunchtime, and Jehan gathers up his books with thoughts of factories and workers' strikes and screaming, injured children jostling for attention in his mind.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

Some two miles away and some hours later at Oakham House, Mrs Bagshaw, the Prouvaires' cook, is feeling quite out of temper. In the first place, Mrs Bagshaw, a solid-looking woman in her mid sixties at least, is not fond of change. And secondly, this particular change has come in the shape of a particularly small and scrawny fourteen-year-old boy who, the cook believes, will be far more of a hindrance than a help.

“No disrespect to the master, an' all,” says she, slamming down a mixing bowl on the table in front of her and beginning to pummel the eggs inside it with ferocity, “But bless me if I know what 'e was thinkin', gettin' that little scrap of a thing to work for 'im.”

Nellie, the scullery maid, nods sagely. “D'you know, Missus Bagshaw, I'd not be surprised if 'e starts tryin' ter steal food from the pantry, I wouldn't. 'E doesn't look like 'e's 'ad a good meal in a while.”

“I'm not a thief.”

The women spin on their heels almost simultaneously at the voice from the doorway. The little newcomer, Henry Feuilly, stands scarlet with humiliated, hurt indignation. Realising he has spoken out of turn, he ducks his head, as is his habit, but, even whilst staring at the floor, ploughs on resolutely, “And I'll work hard, I will. I en't going to let Lord Oakham regret letting me work here. He's done a good thing for me, he has, and I won't repay him by stealing from him.”

“Oh, fancy yerself a little gentleman, do yer?” Mrs Bagshaw says tartly, recovering herself. “Well, yer won't get in the master's good graces just by makin' nice. 'Ere, 'e'll be wanting 'is afternoon tea, soon. You can take it up to 'im in the library. 'E likes to 'ave a cuppa while 'e works, does the master.” She bustles around the table, humming to herself in vicious, staccato bursts. A cup, teapot, milk-jug, sugar-bowl and a plate of biscuits come clattering onto a tray. “An' you watch yerself with that. That's good china, that is; it don't want breakin' by clumsy boys.”

And with that, she turns her back on him resolutely and resumes beating the eggs.

For a moment, the boy hovers uncertainly in the doorway. Then:

“Get on with yer, Feuilly,” says Nellie, not unkindly, “Go on. The teapot don't bite.”

So he steps forward and, gingerly, picks up the tea tray. Nellie grins at him as he retreats.

“See yer later, Feuilly,” she says, “Sorry fer callin' yer a thief.”

At this, he is taken aback. “'S'alright,” he mumbles, backing out of the room and going up the servants' stairway as quickly as he dares. The china clinks ominously.

The Prouvaires' home is, as we have said, not especially large as manor houses go, but to Feuilly, it seems enormous. Having known for years only the blank, grey walls of Wellwood, he is overwhelmed by the sheer sumptuousness of this house; the abundance of colour – here, a splash of blue; there, a hint of deep orange, surprising and vivid. So many things draw his gaze that he does not know where to look, and several times already, he has had to remind himself not to dawdle. With the tray in his hands, though, he is obliged to be careful, and so – not without a twinge of guilt – allows himself to take a little longer in reaching the library, even stopping for a moment on the stairs to admire an oil painting depicting a family picnicking beneath a leafy bower. The detail on the child's bonnet is masterful, and he has to shake himself mentally, saying to himself, you are not here to look at pictures; you are here to do a job, and if you don't do it, you'll be thrown out onto the streets, and it'll be your own fault, it will.

Thus chastened, he continues up the stairs and turns onto a wide landing. The carpet is thick and springy underfoot, and there are more pictures on the walls. Upon his arrival here, the housekeeper, Mrs Maberly, took to him with a rough cloth and some hard, sour-smelling soap, deaf to his protests (mercifully, he had kept his trousers on, rolled up to the knees, but the ragged shirt had come off at Maberly's insistence – “We don't have grubby people in this house,” - and he had heard the soft, sharp intake of her breath at the latticework of scars criss-crossing his back) but even so, suddenly he feels very grubby indeed, and it is with great reluctance that he carefull shoulders open the library door.

Only to find that the library is quite, quite empty.

Cautiously, he moves further into the room and places the tea-tray on a table. He has every intention of turning around and leaving straightaway, but the books – oh! - he has never seen so many books in his life. The shelves stretch from floor to ceiling, row upon row of books, some bound with leather, others with silk; some with gold words embossed upon the spine, others with silver. He lets out a small sound somewhere between a sigh and a gasp. If I lived here, he thinks, really lived here; say for instance, if I was the master's son, I'd sit in here all day and read. But he cannot comprehend even the notion of having all those books at his disposal; it is like the most ludicrous dream, and yet here they all are, just in front of him. He could reach out his hand and pick one out, this very instant, if he chose to! There is a headiness to the idea; an intoxicating sense of possibility, as though the whole world can be reached from this room. As though he might know anything and everything; might no longer be ignorant; might no longer be little and useless and insignificant.

And so, hardly knowing what he is doing, Feuilly takes another halting step forward and reaches out to take a book from the nearest shelf.

Its pages are very smooth and the colour of palest butter. It is Mr Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, and Feuilly has never read a novel before, though his grandmother used to, he thinks.

He takes a small but very aware sort of breath; the sort of breath one takes when preparing oneself for something very important. And he reads:

“The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obsc- obscu- obscuri-”

He is so busy struggling over the word obscurity, quite furious with himself because he should know this word, that he does not hear the opening of the door, nor notice the quiet footsteps of another boy entering the room, until a quiet voice asks: “What are you doing?” and poor Feuilly, so taken by surprise, promptly drops The Pickwick Papers onto the carpeted floor.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

This, Jehan supposes, must be the new hallboy his father spoke about. But he does not look like any hallboy Jehan has ever seen before. Firstly, he has never seen a hallboy appear remotely interested in books – not, he realises too late, that he has ever given too much thought to what sort of things servant boys might be interested in – and this boy was quite clearly engrossed in whatever he was reading before Jehan interrupted him. And secondly - 

Secondly, this boy looks like something from a novel; from one of Dickens' himself, perhaps. He is precariously thin; a tangle of angular, brittle limbs, and his eyes are very large and full of what can only be panic. He is frozen; only his eyes move, darting from the spread pages of the fallen book, to Jehan, and back again. Finally, he breaks the hush that has fallen between them with what Jehan immediately terms an outpouring of words.

“I didn't mean ter – to, I mean, I didn't mean to – I wouldnt've dropped it only you made me jump – oh! I'm not sayin' it's your fault, mind, it's my fault really, only I didn't mean anything by it – I just wanted to have a look – there was no one in here – I was bringing tea - ” here, he gestures helplessly towards the tray on the nearby table, “- for the master, you see. But he wasn't here – so, well – I en't never seen – I haven't never – I – oh – I haven't ever seen so many books before and I – well – I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, and I didn't mean to drop it! Don't tell yer father,” he finishes desperately, “Them women in the kitchen – the cook and the other one – they was right about me; I've only gone and ruined things already.”

His shoulders slump. He lowers his head again, blinking rapidly, furiously biting his lip in an effort to hold back tears. Jehan has never seen such a frantic, wretched boy.

“It's all right,” he says after a moment, trying to adopt the measured, even voice Combeferre uses when one of the younger boys has got himself into a scrape, “It's all right, I won't tell Father, though I don't think he'd be very angry with you, anyway. Here,” he moves to pick up the fallen book, and the boy flinches visibly. Jehan's throat constricts a little; he feels himself on the brink of feeling something that will change him, though of course, he does not know it, or know even how to describe it. He picks up the book, smooths out the pages and returns it to its proper place.

Remembering Enjolras picking up his own book the previous year, an idea comes to him. “I can bring you books, if you like,” he tells the boy, who stares at him in mute surprise. Jehan goes on, “Father has so many books, he wouldn't notice if a few were to be misplaced for a while. You can give the ones you've finished back to me every time I bring you new ones,” swept up on this new notion, he continues excitedly, “Perhaps you might tell me what you think of the books, after you've read them? I do like to talk about books, but most of my friends are older, and cleverer I think, than me, and sometimes I feel terribly stupid talking about that sort of thing to them.”

The other boy is still staring at him, his panic giving way to bewilderment. “You – you don't want – I mean – you want to lend me books?”

Jehan nods earnestly.

“Why?”

This question takes him quite by surprise. “Well,” says Jehan thoughtfully, “I don't know. I suppose because you want to read, and nobody else is reading them, so you might as well. What is your name, again? Father did say, but I forgot.”

“Feuilly,” says the boy, and it does not occur to Jehan, who has spent his day being Prouvaire, to wonder why the servant boy does not even bother to give him his Christian name. “But... I still don't understand... why're you helping me?”

To this, the only answer Jehan can provide is, “Well. Er. It's what people do. Or, what they're supposed to do.”

For some moments, Feuilly seems to think about this. The sky outside the window is darkening, throwing his face into shadow and making his eyes gleam. Jehan removes The Pickwick Papers from its shelf again and hands it over to Feuilly. Among his friends, he has always been the smallest, but he and Feuilly, he notes, are almost the same height.

“Take it,” he says, at the other boy's hesitation, and smiles, “It isn't a trick. Really. I ought to find candles for you, too, so you can read in the night. I can -”

And then, shrill and bell-like from downstairs, the voice of Mrs Maberly, ringing: “Feuilly! Feuilly, where have you got to? You're to light the lamps in the hall and the smoking room! Feuilly!”

“Got to go,” says Feuilly apologetically, already making for the door, “Thank you. I can't – I mean – just... Thank you.”

And then he is gone, and Jehan, staring after him, is suddenly wondering what it might be like to be the sort of boy who shrinks back as though expecting to be struck, simply for dropping a book.


	3. Chapter 3

The sky is scarcely beginning to lighten when Jehan Prouvaire, still blinking the last remnants of sleep from his eyes, slips out of his room, along the broad corridor and out of the little door at its end, into the servants' stairwell. The treasure he bears is a smallish, brown leather-bound book bearing upon its spine, in faint gold lettering, the words: Reveries of a Solitary Walker. You might note, reader, that this work is by the same Jean-Jacques Rousseau over whom Enjolras and Jehan's rather unlikely camaraderie had begun. This is not a coincidence; Jehan has a notion, young as he is, that he might perhaps try to be for Henry Feuilly what Enjolras has been to him.

His knock upon Feuilly's door is soft. A moment passes, and then footsteps patter on the floor and the door opens inwards to reveal the other boy who, although blear-eyed with sleep, is not quite as wan a figure as he had been upon first arriving, Jehan would like to think.

“Good morning, Feuilly,” he proffers the book, and Feuilly, taking it from him, gives him a small smile. “What did you think of Blake's poems?” There are times, still, when he finds himself not a little unsure of what to say to the quiet, solemn-eyed servant boy, and at such times as these, Jehan returns always to the one common thing they share: books.

Feuilly appears to consider this for a moment. Then: “I think... they look simple, they do – I mean, they're not difficult ter read, are they? - but they're not simple, really. They're -” he makes a vague, expansive gesture with one arm, casting about for the right words to say. “They're meant ter make people see the truth,” is what he finally settles for, and Jehan considers this. He has thought of the stark, clear beauty of Blake's poetry before, but never has he thought much about its truth.

Observing his pensive expression, Feuilly turns and hastens to retrieve the book from where it lies – an old habit – secreted away beneath his mattress. Turning pages with fervent urgency, he finds the place he wants and all but thrusts the book into Jehan's hands. The other boy, in some surprise, looks down at the familiar words, and reads:

“Is this a holy thing to see,  
In a rich and fruitful land,  
Babes reducd to misery,  
Fed with cold and usurous hand?  
Is that trembling cry a song?   
Can it be a song of joy?   
And so many children poor?   
It is a land of poverty!...”

And on, for two more stanzas, it goes.

“Trembling cry a song...” Jehan murmurs to himself, still reading, more slowly than is usual for him. Those words; always, always they make him think of a small bird; querulous and futile thing.

“Sometimes they – sometimes people -” Feuilly falters, trying to find an adequate explanation. It is not, you see, that he does not know what to say; rather that in his mind, there still exists a line that he is very much afraid of crossing. Is it worth giving voice to these thoughts, when he will surely get into trouble for them? “Never mind,” he says finally, and Jehan, who has always been rather a sensitive sort of boy in regard to nuances of feeling, detects in his voice a sort of hollowness. Not bitterness or resignation, but a reluctant submission of sorts. “It doesn't much matter.”

And Jehan shakes his head. “Oh, it does,” he says, and with a furtive glance over his shoulder, steps properly into the room, feeling, as he does so, a protracted sense of guilt that he is worried what his mother might think, if she knew him to be mixing with servants. “Tell me. Only if you want to, I mean, but I should like to hear it.”

“Well,” rejoins Feuilly cautiously, “Mister Blake's poem – it makes me think of one o' the schoolmasters at Wellwood, you see. Everyone said Mister Bragg – that was his name – was a God-fearing man, and you could believe it, too, except... except you couldn't help but wonder (I mean, well, I couldn't, anyway) how any God could want the kind of world Mister Bragg likes ter live in, where order is more important than kindness and control is more important than equality. And Mister Blake's poem, it makes me think that maybe I weren't – maybe I wasn't wrong after all. Maybe it really is wrong, and I'm – we're – not being punished by God for anything.”

There is a careful hope in him, now; somehow, it makes Jehan feel terribly sad.

“Of course you aren't being punished,” is all he can think of to say, in the end. “You haven't done anything wrong.” And he doesn't know this, not really, but suddenly he is quite certain of it.

Feuilly is thinking about this when Mrs Maberly's voice, filled with the characteristic impatience, sounds from just outside the door. “Hurry up, boy!” she calls out, rapping her knuckles upon the wood, “What's keeping you? The house won't wait forever, you know!”

They hear her muttering to herself as her footsteps retreat.

“You'd better wait until everyone's gone off upstairs,” Feuilly tells Jehan, “You don't want them seeing you.” He says it so matter-of-factly, and it is such a direct echo of Jehan's earlier thought, that a pang goes through him. Is he truly ashamed of his friendship with Feuilly? Oughtn't he not to care, what people think? The fact that he cannot do that makes a curious, hot feeling stir inside him and he realises that for the first time in his short life, he is truly angry with himself. You are a coward, Jehan Prouvaire, he chastises himself silently as Feuilly leaves, shutting the door behind him, you're a coward. You're like Combeferre's father, you are.

It is with a heavy heart and a ringing mind that Jehan, a few minutes later, climbs the stairs, telling himself fruitlessly that he does not care a straw about being seen. What sort of person is he, that it is so difficult to convince himself that there is no shame in being friends with a servant boy? After all, he thinks, where is the harm in it? He is just the same as me. In fact, he is probably a good deal wiser than I am.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

The small, blue book of Blake's verse sits in Jehan's satchel until lunchtime, whereupon he takes it out and begins again to peruse it. He intends to re-read the poems; to look at them in a new light, but he finds he cannot focus his mind upon them for long.

“Do you think a person can help being a coward?” he asks Enjolras, now, studiously avoiding his gaze, “I mean, do you think a cowardly man can change his ways?”

Enjolras considers, briefly. “I believe we are born cowards,” he says, “We make ourselves brave.”

This makes Jehan stare. It seems to him that Enjolras is the wisest; the most immovable boy of his age that he has ever met, and there is no one else like him. His face, even now, is inscrutable; Jehan, who is usually quite good at guessing what people are feeling, has no notion of it, with Enjolras.

“I disagree,” says Combeferre, not particularly disagreeably, “I think life makes a man brave or cowardly. He is neither at birth. And I do not think it is necessarily a person's fault, if they are cowardly or fearful. Some have different inclinations than others; that is all. People can't all be the same.”

Grantaire snorts. “Pshaw,” he says, “All men are cowards, whether they think they are or not.”

Jehan is pondering this in some confusion – now he does not know quite what to think – when Courfeyrac approaches them, his expression uncharacteristically solemn. Upon reaching them the brief hesitation he makes before speaking is equally unlike him.

“Combeferre,” he says, “Mister Elme wants to see you in his office, directly.”

And Combeferre looks at first startled, then bewildered, and finally uncertain. He is not the sort of boy to attract trouble; he is moderate and kind and calm; enquiring, yes, but not fiercely inquisitive. What could he have done wrong?

The others watch quietly as he puts away his things and gets to his feet. Only Grantaire seems unperturbed.

“Fifty lines, Combeferre,” he says with a smirk, “'I must write shorter and less meandering essays'.”

Nobody laughs.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

Charles Combeferre has only visited the Headmaster's office upon two occasions. Once, upon his induction to the school; a second time, with Enjolras and six other boys, to receive the shiny blue Prefect's badge which is now pinned to the lapel of his jacket. Both of these times, of course, he had been well aware of what he was doing there.

This is an altogether different experience. Although the enormous mahogany desk and the intricate, if lurid tapestry of the battle of Hastings on the wall behind it are the same, the room's atmosphere is now less impressive and more simply forbidding. Combeferre tries to tell himself that he is being absurd, but he isn't altogether successful in the attempt (that is, he does indeed manage to tell himself this; what he does not quite manage is to believe it).

The grave expression on Mr Elme's face hardly helps. Mr Elme is a rather large and portentous man with a sleek, greying beard and a pair of dark, dark eyes that might once have been keen but now most often bear a look that can only be described as torpid. Today, however, he seems unusually present.

“You are one of our most promising students, you know,” Elme says weightily, “We expect quite great things from you; you be assured of that, young man. We are all on your side.”

“Thank you, sir,” replies Combeferre, not at all reassured. Mr Elme, he realises with a sort of painful presentiment, is only trying to soften the blow that is to come. He knows, too, what the nature of this blow will be. But he does not ask. He waits. This, he thinks; this is his cowardice. He is afraid to know the truth, and all that it will entail. And it is a childish, futile fear, for not knowing the truth does not make it any less true.

“It pains me to tell you -” and here it is; the inescapable, “-that your sister, Amelia, is very ill again. She has taken quite a turn for the worst. Your father asked that you return home immediately.”

That is that, then. Mother will cry and curse and fret and rock herself gently, rhythmically to and fro; Father will shake his head and do nothing. Thomas and Isabel will not understand, and he will not have the heart to tell them. And if – if, this time, Amelia is to die – what then? How will his mother bear it, and how will his father bear his mother?

And would it really be so wrong for Mother – gentle, abiding Mother – to fall to pieces? To mourn the loss of her second child and first daughter? Amelia, who has looked upon the world with wondering eyes; who reminds him a little of Prouvaire in her unexpected reserves of resilience; her unabashed love of the world. The world is full of injustices, and they are not all Man's doing.

“Thank you, sir,” he says again, and his voice is tight. Slowly, as though afraid of what might happen were he to move too quickly, he rises from the high-backed chair. His hands are trembling a little, and he has to clasp them tightly behind his back. “I'll go and pack my things.”

It is not, he knows, the proper, respectful way to take his leave of the Headmaster, but it will have to do. It is all he can do not to simply bolt from the room.

Out in the cool corridor, with its high, vaulted ceilings, he struggles to collect himself. You must not get yourself into a state. Mother will be beside herself and Father will not know what to do. They'll need you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you are like Grantaire! This is absurd.

On and on, in this way, he continues, until he reaches the dormitory. It is only there, kneeling by his bed and stuffing books into an impressive oak trunk that had before been his father's, that his shoulders begin to shake and he drops his head into his hands. It is ridiculous to cry when he does not even yet know what will become of Amelia, but now will be his only chance to do so. Here, in the silence of the empty dormitory, his grief is not selfish. It stirs nothing and moves no one. At home, surrounded by a different sort of silence, it will only make things worse.

Distantly, the bell tolls for the end of lunch. The others will be up here, soon, he realises, to collect their books for the afternoon.

Scrubbing the tears from his eyes with one hand, he packs away the books with an unusual ferocity with the other. Sixteen, people will tell you, is a delicate age, on the verge of life. They are right: the boy Charles Combeferre sees before him the awful prospect of becoming bitter, and sees how he himself might slide towards it inexorably, and trembles. He does not want to become that person. Not ever. But it grows harder and harder to believe that there is a reason for everything that happens; harder and harder to believe that the world is not cruel. And though he can promise himself that he will try, what scares him is the notion that one day, trying will not be enough.


	4. Chapter Four: October 1853

The onset of October brings with it a stiffer, brisker chill in the air. At Oakham House, Mrs Bagshaw cooks up thick, brothy soups and hot stews which sit heavy in the stomach and make Jehan too drowsy to make sufficient effort with his studies in the evenings. There is bread, too, however – soft brown roundels of it – and this he takes to carefully secreting away, when he can, to give to Feuilly on a morning when he brings him more books or, as has happened with increasing frequency of late, slinks surreptitiously down to the servants' quarters just to talk.

The Prouvaires go through candles rapidly with the slow, sure arrival of longer nights. Jehan has to be especially cautious about taking them, now, and avers to say nothing to Feuilly of the extra trouble.

Days file by in a procession of comforting sameness. It would be easy, in this lull of routine; in the comfort of a warm escape from the outside chill, to forget or ignore the changes taking place elsewhere; the stormy precursor to war in the Crimea. The terse telegrams received by Lord Oakham over breakfast; the newspaper articles Enjolras peruses at length and with fervour. That is to say, it would be easy to forget, for many a boy of Jehan's age and circumstance, but he, surrounded as he is by those rare people who are always seeking to immerse themselves in the wider world, cannot forget, and this shaded, unknown future nags at him like a constant stomach-ache. He begins, in fact, to long for something to distract him from this feeling of unease, and it is only when several things begin to happen at once that he half wishes fo the return of that old sameness.

The first of these events takes place on a night when the air is still heavy from a day of ceaseless rain; rain so constant that, when he awakens to the sound of raised voices downstairs, he finds that he is surprised no longer to hear it. He lies on his back and stares upwards; the high ceiling is lost in darkness. A few moments go by before he realises what it is that has awakened him.

And then, of course, he hears it again. It is a low thrum of voices overlaid by the harsher tones of a man whose voice he at first does not recognise, so slurred and strident it is. For a moment, Jehan stays very still. Then, curious despite himself, and more than a little apprehensive, he draws back the blankets, swings his legs over the side of the bed and pads light-footed to the door, which since he was a very young boy has always been kept ajar at night time.

It is here, with the cold air eddying around his ankles, that he recognises the voice as that of his uncle.

“It's all gone!” Mister Bahorel all but bellows, his voice growing louder still. “All of it! Every last penny, and my fault!”

Jehan strains to make out the murmur of his mother's response, but if his uncle's voice is too loud, then Grace's is far too quiet. He wishes he had thought to wrap the blankets around him; the cold brings a dull ache in his chest.

“What will I tell them?” cries Mister Bahorel, and there is a great thud and a muffled cry of surprise from both of Jehan's parents.

You must understand, reader, that it is not, nor ever has been, in Jehan Prouvaire's nature to pry. Most people, however – and young people in particular – have their curiosities, and when piqued at this hour, still half tangled in the muddle of sleep, these become insatiable. Had Jehan not decided in this moment to quietly push open his door and steal out onto the broad landing, he knows he would not be able to catch the barest wink of sleep.

Through the spindles of the staircase the boy peers down. The figures below, illuminated in lantern-light, are yellowish and indistinct. Sitting at the foot of the stairs is his uncle, a round-shouldered bulk shadowed by the wall. Lord and Lady Oakham stand before him, close together, the downward slant of the light shading their eyes blackish. Somehow, Jehan thinks, they make an oddly macabre trio; if he were a painter such as Theodore Gericault, he might like to paint them that way, ranged in firelight.

“We'll lose everything,” Mister Bahorel's voice is quieter, now, and ragged, as though he has shouted himself hoarse. “It is my fault, not Lucetta and George's. You must help us – please,” he remembers to add at the last moment, and the desperation in his voice rises like something tangible.

There follows a very pointed sort of pause, in which Grace Prouvaire looks up at her husband, and then down at her brother-in-law. Then:

“I will give you what you need,” says Lord Oakham at length, and Jehan has never heard his father sound so grave. “But as you said, it's for Lucetta and for George. They do not deserve this. You have been reckless and selfish far beyond the point where one can call it simply a mistake. And I must make this clear,” he is silent for a moment before going on, as though to let the weight of his words sink in, “This is the last time I will help you. Do not come here asking for money again.”

But this last, Jehan's uncle seems hardly to have heard. He lurches to his feet, stumbling in a ferocious overflow of feeling towards those who would now become his benefactors with a thickened cry of “Thank you! Thank you both! I'll repay you; know that I will!”

“Andrew,” says Jehan's mother, so softly that he can hardly hear her, “Please.”

“I shall have Lant see you home,” Lord Oakham interposes with forced calm, “I hope that next time we see each other, it will be under better circumstances than these.”

Jehan does not wait to hear any more. He is already backing away towards the door of his bedroom, his thoughts whirling dizzily. He has known for some time that his Aunt Lucetta and Uncle Andrew are in a difficult financial situation, but never has he stopped to suppose that they might lose everything they have. Does Cousin George know about this? Surely not; or, if he does, then he does a fine job of going about as though he doesn't care a straw about any of it. Either way, Jehan, who is supposed to know nothing of this himself, has no right to tell him.

His thoughts spin and buckle madly as he clambers back into bed, and it is a very long time before he finally falls asleep.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

It is said that morning brings resolution; that the first rays of sunlight, however weak and watery they might be, hold some sort of power to dispel any fears the night brought with it. Jehan Prouvaire learns today that this is not the case. He is preoccupied as he readies himself for the school day, and almost forgets altogether that this morning he means to take a copy of the evening paper down to Feuilly, who lately has taken a specific interest in reading the news.

But remember he does, if belatedly, and half-rushes down the back-stairs, clattering more loudly than ever he has dared to before. His knock at the other boy's door is loud, too, and his breath saws raggedly in and out.

“Are you alright, Master P- Jehan?” is the first thing Feuilly asks, concern knitting his brow. Even now, upon occasion, he stumbles over Jehan's name, filled as he is with an inclination for deference that, Jehan has to suspect, is not so much inborn as in-beaten.

“Oh, yes,” replies Jehan, far too quickly, “I've brought you the paper, though there's nothing you'll like in it. Everything's about the war. It makes me feel all odd.”

Feuilly's eyebrows go up. “'Course it's about the war. That's why I want to read it.” He lowers his voice, almost conspiratorially, but there is a fervent gleam in his green-brown eyes. “D'you know what I think? I think them Russians 'aven't got any business trampling all over people, I do. I think we've got to go to war, 'else who else will make them stop?”

“I-” Jehan's eyes drop to the paper in his hands, and then rise again to find Feuilly's face, solemn and unwavering. “Do you really think so?” he asks, finally, for want of something else to say. For he has heard Enjolras talk similarly – though in his case, it is mostly about duty and right – and surely, young though they are, they cannot both be wrong, Jehan does not want a war. He does not want his own countrymen – perhaps even men he knows – to die in some strange land. But what he wants and what is right, he knows, are not always the same thing.

Feuilly nods in answer to his question, and takes the proffered sheaf of newspaper, his eyes already scanning the front page eagerly.

“Well, then,” says Jehan, with a strange reluctance to leave the dim, close servants' quarters, “I suppose I had better go. I'm quite late already.”

Feuilly's answering glance and wave are distracted, and Jehan, as he is climbing the stairs, is so preoccupied with thoughts of the impending war and hopes that Feuilly will not be punished too often for dawdling today, that he scarcely notices the little, laboured shiver his breath makes with every upward step.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

“Enjolras has gone absolutely barking mad,” Courfeyrac announces to a rather weary Jehan, the moment he claps eyes upon him. They are crossing the schoolyard, buffeted this way and that by a keen, damp wind. At Jehan's surprised and rather nonplussed expression, Courfeyrac presses on: “He's had a letter from Combeferre, you see. His sister, Amelia, has died, and his mother is in a very bad way about it. His father does not know what to do about it all, and – oh, you know what Combeferre is like – he's actually considering not coming back to school.” Courfeyrac shakes his head emphatically, now striding along slightly ahead of Jehan, who has to hurry to catch up. “Of course, Enjolras isn't having any of that. He means to write to Combeferre's father directly and entreat him to – what was it? - talk some sense into him.”

Jehan's eyes grow very wide. He has been in such a bother about the Bahorels and about his conversation with Feuilly, that he had quite forgotten about Combeferre and his sister.

“Will his father do that, do you think?” he asks, rather limply, and Courfeyrac lifts his shoulders in a shrug.

“I don't know, but – oh, look, there's Grantaire; he might know better than us what's going on.” And he clips off at quite a pace towards Grantaire, with Jehan trailing as quickly as he can behind him.

They reach Grantaire just as they are about to enter the huge hall where they take their lunch, and Grantaire is more concerned with getting into the warmth than with answering them immediately. The have almost arrived at their table by the time he finally decides to say, by way of an answer:

“Oh, Enjolras is in the library, now, writing the letter. He intends to have it sent this evening. He was quite indignant about it all, as though it were all somehow Combeferre's father's fault.” He gives a dry laugh, “Oh, you should have heard some of the things he was saying. I've never seen him so irritable over such a small thing.”

Courfeyrac laughs, but Jehan breaks in, with quite unexpected indignation:

“It isn't a small thing. A girl is dead.”

The pair of them look at him in mild surprise. “Well, yes,” says Grantaire, more than a touch dryly, “But that's hardly the sort of thing Enjolras usually gets all hot and bothered about , is it?”

Courfeyrac nods his agreement. “No, he's not a bit interested in girls. It is odd.”

Jehan, tired as he is, finds himself rather more irritable than usual. Father would call them a pair of dunderheads, he thinks, can they really not see that Enjolras is only concerned for his friend? Why should that be so hard to believe? He helped me when he hardly even knew me. “He isn't made of stone. Enjolras is not a god. He's a boy, just like any of us, only rather cleverer.”

He does not realise he has spoken this last aloud until he feels Courfeyrac and Grantaire' eyes on him.

“Well,” he mumbles, reluctant to back down and yet eager to, “It's true.”

Courfeyrac looks as though he is battling the urge to laugh again. Grantaire is thunderstruck. Before either of them have a chance to make any sort of reply, however, the full, deep chiming of the bell, normally used to signal the end of lunch, makes them jump almost clear out of their seats. All at once, every eye in the hall is on the headmaster, ascending the dais at the end of the room.

The headmaster stands still and watches them all, eyes moving from table to table until every last student is silent. The silence has a pressing, insistent quality. Even Courfeyrac's expression, now, is serious.

The headmaster clears his throat with none of his usual portentousness. “My dear boys,” he begins. He has never referred to any one of them as dear before today.

Jehan knows what he is going to tell them before the words leave him, but that does nothing to lessen the blow.

“We must find strength in each other in this difficult time; we must unite, for it is only as one that we can face what is ahead. Children, we are at war.”


	5. Chapter 5

War. In the years afterwards, the boys would trade stories with various new acquaintances, weighing in on a distant frisson of shared horror. Jehan would remember Oakham School's grand hall; how silent it became. How all other thoughts – thoughts of Enjolras and his letter; thoughts of his aunt and uncle's seemingly dire fiscal plight – receded in the wake of this news.

War.

For Henry Feuilly, the recollection would be quite different. He, unlike Jehan, does not find out through any grand announcement. He is in the kitchen, fetching lye soap and a bucket, when one of the housemaids – a wispy sort of girl named Bess, who might be pretty were her large, light blue eyes not rather too far apart – comes bursting in, full tilt, with none of her usual decorous reserve.

“It's startin'!” she announces, and though her voice quavers, there is a certain amount of relish in it too, “Lord Oakham 'imself just got a telegram, 'e did. Britain's declared war, 'e said, on the Russians. That means it's startin'.”

Feuilly, crouched beside an open cupboard, freezes in the act of moving a particularly large and cumbersome jar.

“We know what it means, Bess,” Mrs Bagshawe's tart response is rather ruined by the definite tremor in her own voice. It seems that none among their number can speak without faltering. “We may not have the privilege of changing her ladyship's sheets, but we aren't imbeciles.”

From his lowly vantage point, Feuilly, turning and craning his neck slightly, sees Bess' face colour.

“Aren't yer scared, Missus Bagshawe?” she asks, and the older woman purses her lips.

“I am,” opines Nellie, rolling out a pie-crust, “All them men, goin' off to fight – I know it's all honourable and that, but it en't nice to think of. What d'ye reckon, Feuilly? We ought ter get a boy's opinion, en't we?”

Feuilly manages to still the clamour of his own thoughts just long enough to give a hasty and rather unconvincing reply of: “I haven't got an opinion”, but Nellie, dizzy though the girl can appear upon occasion, is not decieved.

“'Course you 'ave,” she tells him, “Everyone's got opinions, 'aven't they? Missus Bagshawe prolly don't care about the war, since she en't got a husband to go off an' fight, anyway.”

Rather predictably, this does not please Mrs Bagshawe, who expostulates, her voice sharp: “You'd better not be using this as a chance to disrespect me, my girl. We may all be shocked, just now, but sure as anything I can scold you just as good now as I can any given Sunday.”

Nellie stifles a giggle. “I wish I 'ad a gent to wait for while the war's on,” she says. Then, jesting: “Aren't yer old enough to put on a uniform, Feuilly?”

Feuilly ponders this. He is not, of course, of the age to do any such thing. But supposing he was... Would he? Would he have the courage to- but it is not, he realises swift on the heels of that thought, so much about courage as about why they are fighting. Does Britain have any more right hankering after the Crimea – the “sick man of Europe”, so says Russia; Feuilly has read as much in the papers, and it always gives him a sick twinge of something akin to disgust – than Russia or anywhere else for that matter? He is beginning to have a notion or two about freedom; it is too easy for those small, downtrodden countries to remind him forcibly of his time at Wellwood, with the schoolmasters and the other boys as a sort of proto-Russia and Britain. It is absurd, of course, and a tad melodramatic to boot, but the association sticks, somehow. Sometimes, one cannot help these things. And in any case, there is truth in it. Just last week, Feuilly had seen Lady Oakham shaking her head and shuddering exaggeratedly over some gypsies who were encamped on the Common, and he had been yearning to ask her why they bothered her so – they were, after all, just people. Surely, one could not place a black mark against an entire people. Bragg and Cloake had thought all the boys ignorant, but they had not been. And Feuilly, knowing this, cannot reconcile himself to the fact that any one person is inferior to another merely by dint of the set into which they have been born.

But, “'Ere, Feuilly,” Nellie is saying, now, so loudly that Mrs Bagshawe gives her a quelling look. “Where's your 'ead, t'day? You afeared about this war, are yer?”

With a little start, he looks up. He shakes his head; it has not crossed his mind, in truth, to be afraid.

“Well, then,” says Mrs Bagshawe, briskly, “You can be getting on with what you're doing, can't you? If you aren't busy being a silly goose like these girls here, there's no reason to dawdle, is there?”

And that is the end of that; change is announcing itself across the country like a thunderclap, and Feuilly must go back to his lye soap and rough cloth.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

In the ensuing weeks, the manor house is a sombre place. Lady Oakham, already of a rather delicate predisposition, is wont to take fright at the smallest things. She will not read the papers; she refuses, abjectly, to hear any talk of the war within her earshot. Increasingly often, she complains of a pain between her eyes and takes to her bed, drawing thick drapes on the world outside.

The change in his wife makes Lord Oakham more serious than ever. He is given to brooding, and Jehan finds that he is lucky to elicit even a few words out of him at table. With his parents so distant, the boy is lonely. And the lonelier he becomes, the more time he spends wandering from room to room, trying to catch Feuilly at some task or another so that they may steal a brief exchange of words.

Feuilly is reading Henry V. War is everywhere. The hallboy puzzles over Renaissance English, fumbling, frustrated, with the words. Jehan, from the doorway of the little room at the bottom of the house, watches him struggle and wishes he could help, but though he himself understands Shakespeare, he has no notion of how to teach it. Out of nowhere, he wishes Combeferre were here; he is far better at that sort of thing.

The Bahorels come for dinner again. Mister Bahorel is his usual genial self, but Lucetta is subdued and George surly. He drags his knife and fork across his plate until his mother and Lady Oakham give him a near-simultaneous glare. Dinner is a strained affair, and afterwards, the boys are sent outside to 'play' whilst their parents talk.

Out of doors, the air is beginning to be damp and chill. It is not quite dark, but soon will be. Jehan walks aimlessly beside his cousin. George Bahorel seems quite impervious to the cold, and Jehan, shivering slightly, envies him.

“Mother and Father are being absolutely beastly, you know,” says George, presently, with considerable and unwarranted vitriol, “It isn't enough that they must uproot us and force me to become a day pupil; now Mother is cross because Father will have to work. What a stupid thing to be cross over, don't you think? I should like to work. It would be better than lounging about the house.”

“Yes,” says Jehan, realising to some surprise that he quite agrees with his cousin. “It is a silly thing to bother about. People ought to work, I think. My-” he stops, quite suddenly. He had been going to say 'My friend Feuilly works, and he's not any less respectable than your father; a good deal more, I should think, in fact'. Of all the foolish things to say! Notwithstanding the fact that George might be quite insulted at the idea of a servant boy being more respectable than his father – what would George think if he knew Jehan was friends with a servant at all? But perhaps he wouldn't mind; perhaps-

And there is that old, increasingly familiar thought, again. You are a coward, Jehan Prouvaire. A low, spineless coward. And so, without giving himself a chance to think, he cuts off this litany the best way he knows how. He turns to Cousin George and says:

“Come with me. I want to introduce you to someone.”

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0-

Feuilly is blacking Lord Oakham's boots when Jehan appears with a boy he has never spoken to, but recognises as Lord and Lady Oakham's nephew. The stranger has Jehan's coppery hair, though of a slightly darker hue, but that is where the similarity between the two boys ends. George Bahorel is swarthy and stocky. His eyes bear the sort of glint that, back at Wellwood, would have made Feuilly intensely wary, and does so now, too. Jehan, if he notes Feuilly's discomfiture or Bahorel's bewilderment, does not acknowledge it.

“Feuilly,” he says, presently, “This is my cousin, George Bahorel. George, this is Henry Feuilly. He's my friend.”

George Bahorel's air of confusion vanishes. With the same overblown, magnanimous manner as his father, he claps Feuilly on the back – he has just risen hastily to his feet – with such force that Feuilly almost stumbles.

“Good to meet you,” he says, “I wish our servants were worth making friends with. Most of them are a tedious lot, though the cook's a card. She swears like a trooper.”

Feuilly lets out a short laugh despite himself. It occurs to him that he might return this bit of information with something about the Prouvaires' own cook, but he decides against it – what will Jehan think of him? - and stands there awkwardly, silence colouring his cheeks pink.

“You don't say much, do you?” Bahorel presses on with a coarse laugh of his own, and Feuilly responds with a non-committal shrug of his narrow shoulders.

“I talk lots,” he says with an air of candid, unthinking diffidence, “Sometimes.”

This is hopeless, he thinks, I never could get along with anyone my age, except for Jehan.

“Feuilly ought to go to Oakham School,” Jehan rattles, “He reads so many books, you know. I bring them to him from Father's library. And the papers, too.”

“Oh,” Bahorel looks thoroughly uninterested, which does little to surprise Feuilly. “What d'you think to this war, then?”

George Bahorel is good at making missteps, thinks Feuilly, seeing the strained expression on Jehan's face. But Feuilly is as bound to answer questions as he is to ask them, no matter the trouble it might lead him into.

“I think it's wrong,” the words fly out of him quite unchecked, “I think we ought to go to war with Russia to free the Crimea from them; not to take it for ourselves.”

Bahorel snorts. “I want to fight,” he says, “I'd go out and fight tomorrow, if I could.”

Jehan's eyes go quite round. “Would you really?”

“I bloody well would. I wonder what Mother would say, then. I expect she'd be proud. She'd have to be, wouldn't she? Where're your parents, Feuilly? Are they servants, too? I suppose they're farmers, are they?”

Feuilly's rejoinder is quietly blunt. “My parents are dead,” he says, and Bahorel has the good grace to look slightly abashed.

“Bloody hell,” he says, “That's rotten. I'd say I'm sorry, but I think that's a stupid saying. Nevertheless, it's awful luck. Are you alright?”

Feuilly cannot help laughing at the absurdity of this question. “Of course I'm alright,” he says, caught quite off-guard, “I never knew them. My grandmother looked after me until I was eight. Then she got sick and the beadle bore me off to Wellwood.”

“Wellwood? They give you pig slop instead of porridge, there, I heard!”

“Whoever told you that?” asks Feuilly. “They don't. I bet Mister Bragg would wish he'd thought of that, if he heard, though.”

“It can't be much worse than being a day boy at Oakham, can it? I get into all sorts of fights; can't keep my mouth shut when people poke fun at me for it, you see.”

And then – and then – oh, how he wishes he knew when to be quiet! - the words are tumbling out of Feuilly with unrestrained vehemence. He quite forgets all he has taught himself on how to speak 'properly'. “There're worse things than getting into fights, yer know. At Wellwood yer get beaten in front of the other boys all the time, an' yer en't allowed to even look at the Misters the wrong way else you get called disrespectful, an' the other boys are – are – they get yer into trouble all the time 'cause if it's you, well at least it en't them – an' I'd rather be a day boy at yer posh school any day than go back there! I rather be a servant 'ere; Missus Bagshawe scolds but Nellie an' Bess are kind an' so's Jehan. D'you know I thought 'e was going to hit me that first day when I dropped the book in Lord Oakham's library. Yer don't know the first thing about what it's like at a place like that, and it en't something to joke about, neither!”

Bahorel stares at him wordlessly for a moment, astonishment mingling with something almost akin to respect.

“Well, if I'd known you at Wellwood,” he says, “I'd have floored those other boys for you, and the schoolmasters too, you watch. Wouldn't I, Jehan?”

Jehan nods, but he cannot help bursting into laughter. Feuilly laughs too, and then – grudgingly at first – Bahorel joins in. The three of them laugh helplessly; laugh until their sides ache. The pain shoots up between Feuilly's ribs and it is the first time he has ever known pain to come from something good. It gives him a curious feeling; one he cannot quite put into words, but which feels suspiciously like contentment.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

The following day, Combeferre returns to Oakham School.

This is quite out of the blue, for Enjolras had never received any response to the long and coolly voluble letter he had sent to his father. He arrives when the rest of them are just sitting down to lunch in the hall; Courfeyrac spots him first, jumping up to point him out amid the throng of students.

“Look!” he cries, “It's Combeferre! He has come back. I knew he would. Didn't I say he would, Jehan? Didn't I?”

Jehan's brief “Yes” is rather distracted; he is watching Combeferre approach them, and the sight of him does not bring quite the same joy as it give Courfeyrac, for Combeferre's time at home has wrought quite a change in him. In some respects, this change is easy to place; he is thinner – his face, now, is almost gaunt – and as he draws near them, Jehan picks out sleepless shadows beneath his eyes. There is, too, a decidedly unkempt air about him. But none of these things are what really disconcerts Jehan. It is the fact that his friend seems somehow fundamentally smaller in every sense of the word; that there is a new dullness in his astute, thoughtful eyes.

“He is changed,” he says to Enjolras in a quiet voice, and Enjolras nods grimly.

“Your father received my letter, then?” Enjolras asks as Combeferre takes his place on the bench opposite him, and the other boy nods.

“I didn't know about it, at first,” he replies, “In fact, I found it quite by chance. Afterwards, I asked Father whether he thought I ought to come back here.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing of consequence. I'm back, now, in any case. Have you seen the papers, today? This Mister Howard Russell is creating quite a stir, isn't he?”

And he and Enjolras promptly descend into a discussion about war journalism. Jehan tries not to watch them too intently, but it is difficult to keep his attention on what they are saying when the look in his friend's washed-out grey eyes reminds him so forcibly of the look that Feuilly had worn in his own hazel ones when he had first arrived from Wellwood.


	6. Chapter 6

November in Oakham is unusually cold. The air, even when it is still, pinches and nips and bites. The trees are rimed with frost, and the grass crunches underfoot. Lady Oakham looks out of the parlour window and breathes: “Isn't it beautiful? Everything so white and still and peaceful.”

'Peaceful' is hardly the word that Jehan would ascribe to his mother, just now. Any talk of the war still causes her to descend into fits of nerves, though to her credit, she has been spending less and less time in her bed, of late. He does not say this, but asks, instead:

“When will Father be back from the city?”

In the small hours of this morning, his father left for London. Jehan does not closely follow what business Lord Oakham has to attend to, and, more often than not, Lord Oakham does not see fit to discuss it with him. Presently, what he knows is that his father has some urgent matter to resolve, and sends his apologies that he did not say goodbye to him, but did not wish to wake him.

Jehan would far rather have been woken when it was not yet light, than wake as usual to find his father's place at breakfast jarringly empty.

“Just as soon as he can,” replies his mother, brightly. Bess arrives, bringing the tea things, and Lady Oakham occupies herself for the next few moments with brisk, mechanical little motions; pouring milk, adding sugar, stirring. Something in her limpid blue eyes and wan, etiolated beauty makes him think of a lady in a painting he had once seen, and suddenly he feels sorry for her.

“Will that be all, m'Lady?” asks the housemaid, and Jehan's mother nods.

“Yes, thank you, Bess. Oh – please tell Mrs Bagshawe that Mr and Mrs Bahorel will not be dining with us tonight as expected.”

“Yes, m'Lady.” Bess dips a hasty curtsy and departs, leaving Jehan with the watery, unquenchable sadness of his mother.

“Don't worry, Mother,” he says, feebly, “Father will be home, soon.” He does not know why he says this, or why his own eyes moisten at the corners as he does. You had better not cry, he chastises himself. He is fourteen years old – almost a young man. Young men do not cry.

“I know, darling,” says his mother with a dewy smile.

Outside, snow begins to fall in fine, half-hearted flakes.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

“I'm sorry, Mrs Bagshawe! I'll clean it up, now!”

Feuilly looks at the mess of shattered crockery, his breath quickening. Mrs Bagshawe's face has gone quite red and her cheeks balloon with an exasperated, puffed out sigh.

“I didn't mean ter,” he goes on, helplessly, “I just – I'm sorry – that were the best china, wasn't it?”

Mrs Bagshaw purses her lips. “Calm yourself, boy,” she says, none too gently, “What on Earth has got into you? Fetch the broom, will you? I shall have to tell the Missus, you know. That tea-set belonged to her great aunt, it did. It's an heirloom, it is.” She produces the word 'heirloom' with a certain amount of pride, even in her brusqueness.

Feuilly hastens to find the broom. Apprehension sloshes unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach and makes his hands tremble. He has made too many silly mistakes, lately; in truth, his thoughts are wont to drift off in the middle of some task or another, and in a moment he will find that he has done quite the wrong thing. Perhaps he is not fit to be a servant in a great house such as this one. Perhaps Lord Oakham made a mistake in employing him. After all, the Master was only being kind; he had extended the hand of goodness to Feuilly, who repaid him by breaking things and being slow at his chores.

It is no excuse, of course – he knows that – but he has not been sleeping well. Since his departure from Wellwood, he has become accustomed to at least a few hours of peaceful slumber each night, but his thoughts churn noisily away at things which are beyond his control, and keep him awake. He thinks of the war. He thinks of his newest friend, George Bahorel, and how his family will be ruined if his father keeps at the selfish and spendthrift path he is treading. He thinks of Lady Oakham, whom, Jehan tells him, is not feeling quite herself, lately. And he thinks of Jehan himself, and the way the cold makes his breath catch and wheeze ominously – how thin he has become, and how pale! Feuilly is reminded of a boy named William Roth, at Wellwood. Roth in summer had been robust and ebullient; in winter he had been a sickly, attenuated creature – a different child. And one December, barely a week shy of Christmas, he had died. He had become too sick to eat, they had said, and he had starved – wasted quite away. Perhaps that was not the whole truth of it, but nevertheless, it was the harsh winter that had taken William Roth, and now Feuilly cannot banish the thought that the same fate might befall Jehan – his first friend; his confidante (and are those not selfish reasons to pray desperately for his safety and wellbeing?)

And for all his worrying, now he is being nothing but a nuisance. Feuilly's cheeks burn with the shame of it.

He sweeps up the shards of bone-china; haste and meticulous care are quite, quite impossible to achieve at the same time. He works with his head lowered and his shoulders hunched. It might have been possible for him to forget the incident, were it not for what happens next.

What happens next is that Mrs Maberly, the housekeeper, appears, ramrod-straight, in the kitchen doorway. Feuilly looks up at the austere line of her mouth and the black triangle of her dress. Mrs Maberly has always regarded him with an unsavoury mixture of suspicion and pity, and at present her gaze, directly fixed on him, bears only the former.

She is holding, in her long, pale hands, Lord Oakham's bottle-green leather-bound copy of Gulliver's Travels.

Feuilly had been reading it before sleep finally claimed him, the night before. He had risen a little later than he ought, this morning, and evidently in his haste to begin going about his tasks, he had not put the book away.

And now, he realises, his stomach clenching, Mrs Maberly – and everyone else – will think him a thief. And what can he do to persuade them otherwise? He cannot tell them that the book was given to him by Jehan; that would more than likely land the other boy in trouble, himself, for lending out his father's things to common servants.

“What,” asks Mrs Maberly crisply, “is the meaning of this?”

“I -” Feuilly's voice catches in his throat, and he is forced to begin afresh. “I – I was going to give it back.”

Mrs Maberly's lips curve into a humourless smile.

“You may explain yourself to Lady Oakham,” is all she says. But Feuilly is frozen to the spot, his hands locked around the broom handle.

“Go on, then,” Mrs Bagshawe says, prying the broom out of his grasp. Her voice is brisk, but there is something sad and soft in her plain, ruddy face which makes Feuilly's throat constrict. In silence, he follows Mrs Maberly up the narrow staircase, across the sunlit hallway and into the parlour, a room densely populated with ornaments and pictures. Lady Oakham and Jehan sit opposite one another, a tea tray on the rosewood table between them. Two pairs of light blue eyes turn simultaneously on Feuilly and the housekeeper at the sound of Mrs Maberly's sharp rapping at the door-frame.

“Sorry to disturb you, Lady Oakham,” Mrs Maberly says, “But this boy has been stealing from the Master.”

Feuilly cannot look at Jehan to gage his expression. Lady Oakham's eyes have become very wide.

“I don't understand,” she says, frankly, “What has he taken?”

Mrs Maberly holds up the book. Jehan's sharp intake of breath is impossible to ignore.

Feuilly stares at the floor. He can scarcely bring himself to look up even as his benefactor's wife asks him:

“Is this true, Feuilly?”

The fact that she is giving him an opportunity to deny it only makes things far worse. She is kind, Lady Oakham, for all her odd ideas and pettish whims. She means well.

“I wasn't stealing,” he manages, barely audible, “On'y borrowing. I was goin' ter put it back. Really, I was.”

The ensuing silence stretches taut and thin until Jehan, his voice surprisingly steady, bursts forth in a rush:

“Feuilly didn't steal anything. I've been bringing him books from Father's library. He only wants to learn, and there's no harm in it, is there? Everyone ought to have a right to learn – isn't that exactly what Father always says?”

Feuilly finally looks at him, then. Jehan is poised on the edge of his seat, head tilted upwards slightly, like some bird preparing to take flight. He looks certain and unsure all at once, and the look in his eyes implores and demands; is hopeful and afraid and resolved, and Feuilly understands that he has never done anything of this sort, before – never spoken up, willingly, in this way.

“You needn't defend this boy, Jehan,” his mother tells him, “If he has been stealing, he needs to be honest about it. That is what he ought to learn.”

Mrs Maberly nods sanctimoniously. Feuilly's hands are clammy; he wipes them surreptitiously on the back of his trousers.

“I'm not trying to defend him,” Jehan counters, “I really did give him the book. I know I should have asked Father if it was all right, but I thought he might – I didn't know whether he would mind. If you are going to punish anyone, it ought to be me, not Feuilly.”

Lady Oakham's small mouth opens and closes soundlessly; she appears taken aback by her son's earnestness. At length, she says:

“Don't be silly, darling; of course I'm not going to punish you – either of you. But it would have saved an awful lot of fuss if you had simply asked your father, first, you know.”

Jehan nods hurriedly. “I know. I'm sorry.” Then, with startling audacity: “But Mother, might Feuilly continue to read our books? It isn't as though we could possibly read all of them at once.”

His mother lets out a laugh, little and bell-like. “I see no reason why not,” she rejoins, shaking her head as though in mild exasperation, “Really, it isn't customary to give servants the run of your things, but as you say, I don't suppose there is any real harm in it.” Then, to Feuilly, “You must be very careful with Lord Oakham's books, though. Some of them are quite rare, and some cost more money than you could make in half a lifetime.”

Feuilly's face flushes. He nods wordlessly.

“That is the end of that, then, I hope,” Lady Oakham settles back into her seat, “Mrs Maberly, thank you for coming to me about this, but it seems you needn't have troubled yourself.”

Mrs Maberly nods tightly. Her cheeks are almost as pink as Feuilly's. Plainly, she is not pleased, but that, just now, does not trouble Feuilly too much. Weak-kneed with relief, he follows her tacitly from the room.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

The next day, Jehan, buoyed up by new audacity, says to Enjolras:

“Do you know – a peculiar thing happened, yesterday. I've been lending Father's books to our hallboy, Feuilly, and Mrs Maberly found out. She accused him of stealing, so of course I had to explain things, and Mother didn't mind nearly so much as I thought she might.”

“Mind?” Courfeyrac, half-listening, raises his eyebrows, “Why would she mind a thing like that?”

Jehan attempts to explain. “Well, you see, she believes that servants have their place, and that we should be polite and kind to them, but we shouldn't treat them as we'd treat any other person.”

Consternation creases Enjolras' brow. “Well, suffice to say that I'm glad you don't seem to hold the same belief,” he says tightly. “What did she say, then, about the books?”

“Nothing, really,” replies Jehan, “Only that I ought to have said something to Father in the first place. I suppose she's right about that. Poor Feuilly – it must have been an awful shock for him, being accused of stealing like that.”

“If I were a servant,” Courfeyrac opines, “I wouldn't care a bit about books. I'd be quite glad I didn't have to go to school, I think, though it would be awfully tedious, doing chores all day. Actually, I shouldn't like to be a servant at all, apart from the not going to school.”

Jehan laughs. “You sound like Cousin George,” he says. “He always says he'd quite like not to ever go to school again.”

“I think that's an ungrateful thing to say,” Combeferre, who has been quiet until now, puts in with uncharacteristic bluntness, “We're being given endless opportunities – far more than Jehan's friend could ever hope for, no matter how many books he reads. None of us have any right to complain.”

Courfeyrac stares at Combeferre.

“Excuse me,” says Grantaire, raising his eyes skyward, “Let me get out my violin; woe, woe to the people who haven't our wonderful opportunities. That's the way of the world, Combeferre, unjust or not.”

Enjolras' eyes narrow. “That's exactly the kind of thinking which perpetuates the problem,” he responds with more than a hint of asperity,

Grantaire shrugs. “War, education, factories...we're all very good at talking about these things. But it doesn't change anything. We can't change anything. You realise that, surely?”

There comes now the briefest of pauses. Then Enjolras, meeting Grantaire's eyes, says evenly:

“I realise that. But one day, I believe that will change.”


	7. Chapter 7

On the very last day of November, the country is accosted all at once with fresh news of the war. A Russian attack on Ottoman ships in the port of Sinope calls forth a tide of outrage from papers and politicians alike, and everyone, everywhere, has at least some knowledge of what is going on. It is unavoidable.

Jehan's mother is quite beside herself. “We really shall be at war, now!” she says in a high, quavering voice, wringing her hands, desperately. “Think of it!” But she says no more beyond that, for clearly, she does not want to think of it. It does seem that something is beginning; that Britain is being drawn, by some irrefutable magnetism, into the fray. War, up until this point, has been the looming shadow of an idea, like a dread spectre – real enough to induce terror, but without substance. Now, it must begin.

It is no help that Lord Oakham is still in London. He has written letters, two of them, to Jehan and his mother, but the letters are succinct and evasive and ask more of their doings than they tell of his. It is not fair, really, that, but who is Jehan to question it? So he waits. What else is there, indeed, to do?

One morning in the first week of December, Jehan, waking early as usual, makes his way quickly and quietly to the servants' quarters. He is tired, and it seems to him that his breath catches in his chest with every movement. At night, he lies on his side, because to lie on his back makes his own breath stopper up his throat and he bolts upright in a blind panic, counting his breaths in a strained effort to regulate them. Come morning, as now, he does not feel rested, but nevertheless, he is sure to wake long before his mother does, so that he can visit Feuilly before his daily duties begin.

Today, the hallboy is reading a newspaper. The pages crackle as he sets it aside. He looks up, and Jehan recognises the now familiar indignation in the set of his features; the narrowed slant of his eyes.

“I know an apt word for this, I do,” he says stiffly, holding up the paper. “Sensationalism.”

Jehan nods, though he has only had the chance to skim the front page, himself. His mother does not hold with him reading the news. He is too young, she says, for all of that, and this fills him with an indignation of his own, such that he had not really known he possessed. He is not a child, not really. He is not so much younger than Enjolras and Combeferre, and they make a habit of discussing this sort of thing almost daily. It is exactly as Enjolras says; if we do not know what is taking place in the world around us, how then can we be expected to change it? Jehan wants to know things and to change things. He does not want to be afraid.

“I haven't read the papers,” he confesses, “Mother has them taken away before I've any chance to. She thinks I will have nightmares.”

Feuilly does not laugh, the way some boys – Cousin George, for instance – might. His expression, in fact, is grave. It is a different solemnity from that of Enjolras. Enjolras, it seems to Jehan, draws his drive from some deep reserve of determination. He is focused; sharp. Feuilly is determined, too, but his resolve is both frenetic and sad, and not a bit like Enjolras', really.

“Of all the things they could talk about,” Feuilly says, “All them men, dying at sea for no reason except that the Russians want more power. An' they're writing about trade losses instead, tellin' all the rich people that they won't be able to buy any fine silks any more – oh, yes, really horrible. What's wrong with the world, Jehan? They're all making this into a story or a game, getting people mad for all the wrong reasons an' I hate it! I hate it!”

“I hate it, too,” Jehan agrees, moving further into the room and sitting down beside Feuilly on the edge of the low, narrow bed. “I can't imagine what it must be like to be there, in the middle of all the fighting. Cousin George keeps saying that if he was old enough, he'd go off and fight in an instant.”

“I don't know what I'd do,” Feuilly muses, “I don't think the country's gone to war for any of the right reasons, really, but I wouldn't want Russia trampling all over everyone, either.”

Jehan ponders this. “You ought to talk to my friend, Enjolras,” he says, “He knows far more about all of this than I do. I wish I could introduce the two of you.” He is not sure, in fact, that he wishes any such thing. What if – and this is absurd, he knows – what if Feuilly comes to prefer the company of impassioned, strident Enjolras over his own?

The idea of meeting Jehan's school-friends, however, seems to make the other boy more vaguely disconcerted than anything else. He stands up, handing the newspaper to Jehan.

“I'd best go,” he says, almost apologetically, “Mrs Maberly's not in the best of moods with me as it is. I don't want ter be late, or anything.”

Jehan nods; stands, too. A breath whistles in his chest.

They part with a mutual “See you later,” with Feuilly heading off in the direction of the kitchen and Jehan making his way back up the narrow staircase which will bring him to just outside the dining room.

The stairs are more difficult than ever. Jehan breathes in sharp, serrated gasps, shallow and futile. His chest aches. Dark blots swim before his eyes, merging and then breaking apart again in a dizzying sort of dance. He feels that if he stops, even for a moment, he will not be able to go on again – and he does not want that; does not want the abject, frantic concern of his mother or the fussing of Bess, the housemaid. So it is only when he reaches the top of the stairs that his legs give out beneath him, the world looming and jolting in an awful, chaotic rhythm. 

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

It is Mrs Maberly who finds him, only moments later, in a crouched position that is not quite sitting; not quite lying; barely supporting himself on trembling arms, He is dazed, his eyes unfocused. Mrs Maberly's way runs to scolding and briskness, but even she, for a moment, is unsure of herself. It has been some time since the boy was last so ill, but she remembers it.

“What in Heaven's name are you doing down there?” there is nothing unkind in her voice, however, as she bustles towards him and helps him to his feet, supporting him with a thin, strong arm. She does not expect an answer, and goes on, leading him away, “And why on Earth were you coming up the servants' staircase? At this time in the morning, too! Come along – we'll go into the drawing room, and then I shall have to have Elsa get your Lady mother up.” Elsa is Jehan's mother's lady's-maid; she sleeps in a room two doors along from Feuilly's and smells of sharp soap and violets. Jehan rarely sees her about the house, and wonders what she does all day. Mrs Maberly, for her part, disapproves of Elsa, whom she believes too flighty and distractable to be a Lady's maid. According to Feuilly, who has become Bess' unwitting confidante of a sort, Mrs Maberly is jealous of Elsa for her position and her closeness to Lady Oakham. Bess, apparently, had caught Elsa crying over an unmade bed one morning because Mrs Maberly had been overly sharp with her, and the poor housemaid did not know quite what to say to comfort the older girl. Jehan can well imagine this.

Just now, however, Mrs Maberly is uncharacteristically kind. She leads Jehan into the drawing room and guides him to a chair. His breath comes shallow and uneven, still, and his face is waxy pale. There is a servants' bell hanging from a little hook beside the fireplace, and Mrs Maberly takes it up and rings it decisively.

Jehan sits quite, quite still and concentrates on breathing, closing his eyes against the discomposing, blurry flux of objects around him. It seems that a very long time passes before his mother arrives, shrill with that panic particular to morning suddenness; to waking up to something you most certainly would rather were an unpleasant dream. When he opens his eyes to look at her, he is gratified to find that the room has stopped whirling and tilting about him.

“I'm all right, Mother,” he assures her, “Really.”

His mother shakes her head, fine curls flying. “Darling, you really ought to have told me that you were feeling so terribly unwell,” she bursts out, quite breathless herself, “Mrs Maberly, we must send for the doctor -”

“Of course, Lady Oakham. Yes, at once.”

“In the meantime, please tell Lant that we won't be needing him this morning – certainly, Jehan cannot go to school. He needs rest.”

Mrs Maberly nods obediently, dips a brief curtsy and departs, leaving Jehan to be led, unresisting, back upstairs to his room by a particularly fretful Lady Oakham.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

A long-standing – and quite unexplained, insofar as Jehan knows – mutual dislike exists between Lord Oakham and the town's practising physician. Even in her husband's absence, then, Lady Oakham chooses to send, instead, for the apothecary, who arrives with two apprentices in tow. Two apprentices, Mrs Maberly opines, is a little excessive, but she keeps the opinion to herself, knowing as she does that Lady Oakham will take the abundance of help as a positive sign.

The apothecary, Mr Knowe, is white-haired and white-faced with attenuated, weaselly features and large, watery blue eyes. For all that, he is not an unkind man, and his questioning and inspection of Jehan is gentle. The two apprentices stand back near the door. One is tall, gangly, with such a fine down of pale hair on his head that at a glance he appears to be quite bald. The other is smaller and chestnut-haired, with a smattering of freckles on his small, pointy nose. Neither boy appears to be much older than Jehan, and quite suddenly, he thinks of Feuilly. News will have reached the servants, now, that he is ill enough not to have gone to school. Is Feuilly worried? He wishes he could reassure him.

Mr Knowe tells Lady Oakham that things are quite worse than he had thought. The boy is very weak; his condition has been deteriorating quietly for weeks, now. (“Oh! Jehan!” says his mother with a stifled sob, and he feels worse than ever). He goes on to prescribe bed rest and a dizzying array of medicines and rubbing tinctures, tells Jehan not to worry (“Everything will be quite alright, my dear boy, just as long as you rest as you should”), and proceeds to ask Lady Oakham if he might speak to her alone, downstairs. His apprentices, he says, should stay here and talk to Jehan until it is time for them to go; it is they who shall be bringing him his medicine, and so they had best get to know one another, hadn't they?

Then the adults leave, and Jehan, despite himself, is afraid. What does Mr Knowe wish to speak to his mother about?

“Don't look so grim,” says the taller boy, cheerfully. He has the sort of voice which manages to be at once both bright and quite deep. “You'll be alright. I'm Lesgles, by the way – Joseph Lesgles. This is Thomas Joly.”

Thomas Joly smiles, and Jehan, uncertainly, smiles back.

“Your house is enormous,” Joly says with unabashed awe, “I've never been anywhere so...big, before.”

At this, Jehan's face flushes. These boys, of course, will lodge in the boxy room behind the apothecary's workshop, and that, for now, is their lot in life. The ease in which he himself lives seems more profoundly unearned than ever.

“It's not my house, really,” he mumbles, ducking his head so that strands of red-gold hair fall into his face, “It's my father's.”

“You'll inherit it, though, one day,” Lesgles points out, and Jehan, thinking of the distant point at which his father will one day die, only feels worse. He traces the pattern on the bedspread with his eyes, at a veritable loss for words.

“Do you like working for Mr Knowe?” he asks, finally, and both boys nod dutifully.

“I'm very lucky,” says Joly, “My father has just enough money to set aside some each month, to pay for my apprenticeship. I don't know what I'd do, otherwise. End up working in a factory, I suppose.” He shudders. “Imagine all the things that could go wrong in a factory – all that heavy machinery – and the infections you can pick up – goodness. I should hate to work somewhere like that, wouldn't you?”

Lesgles nods. “Knowing me, I'd end up getting my head chopped off by a swinging blade in the first week,” he rejoins, quite unconcernedly.

“It'd be noisy, too,” Jehan adds, despite himself, “You wouldn't be able to hear yourself think.”

“You'd have to shout,” Lesgles agrees with a little laugh. Joly laughs, too; a nervous squeak.

“What're you going to be, then?” he turns his attention to Jehan, changing the subject, “When you leave school, I mean?”

And Jehan realises that he has only ever given the most fleeting, vague thought to this. “I don't know,” he admits with some surprise, and is aware again of the luxury of not needing to know. “I would quite like to write things, I suppose.”

“What sorts of things? Papers, like that Russell character who's doing all the war things?”

He shakes his head, thinking. “Stories, maybe. And poems. That would be nice.” How strange it is, he thinks; he has known Enjolras and Combeferre, with all their high-minded notions, for close to a year, but it is only now, with these two, Lesgles and Joly; two quite ordinary apothecary's assistants, that his future twists in his mind like a real, live thing with choices and opportunities and chances. He is aware, truly aware for the first time, that one day, he could be someone.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

“Fell down at the top of the servants' stairs, 'e did,” Nellie says, shaking flour into a bowl with deft, adept hands, “Dunno what 'e was doin' there. Missus Maberly found 'im, an' now the apothecary's 'ere.”

Feuilly freezes in the act of picking up the mop, his heart thrumming wildly in his chest. Go on, he urges himself, to no avail, don't just stand there. Get on with it.

“Lady Oakham's in a right fix, Bess says,” Nellie goes on, “She's been cryin' an' everythin'. I tell yer what, I know she's got money, but I wouldn't be her for all the tea in china, jus' now. 'Er husband's not 'ere an' now 'er son's ill -”

“Will he be alright?” the words burst out of Feuilly before he can help himself, and with them, he finds himself able to move again. Mop in one hand, bucket in the other, he turns to look at Nellie. “Jeha- Master Oakham; is he going ter be alright?”

“I dunno,” Nellie replies with obvious surprise, staring at him openly. “Best 'ope so, else Lady Oakham'll be worse than ever.”

Feuilly nods. Mechanically, he takes the mop and bucket upstairs – the marble tiles of the hallway floor will not clean themselves. Up these stairs is where Jehan walked, just before he fell, Feuilly thinks, and unbidden, the image of William Roth's body, covered by a white sheet, rises in his mind. The schoolmasters said that God had taken Roth as a punishment for his wrongs, and Feuilly finds himself thinking fervently, now, feeling terrible for such thoughts all the while: please let that be true. Please let them be right. Because Jehan en't done any wrong that I know, and that means he'll be alright, don't it?


	8. Chapter 8

“Please, Mother,” Jehan Prouvaire, well enough now at least to take his meals downstairs, looks across the impressive dining table at Lady Oakham, “I need to go back to school. I shall fall behind if I am away too long, and anyway,” tilting his chin upwards slightly, “I am quite better.”

Lady Oakham regards her son incredulously, her eyes widening almost to comical effect. “Absolutely not. Mr Knowe insisted that you rest.”

“And I have rested. Really, Mother.” In truth, he does not think that he can spend another day at home in the confines of his room. Aside from the welcome visits of Thomas Joly and Joseph Lesgles, he has been, of late, quite alone. With his father still away, how can he forget that he, himself, is the man of the house. He ought not to be abed. Even his books, now, provide only the smallest of consolations. There had been a time when Jehan would scarcely have noticed his isolation, having known little else. Now, knowing what it is to have friends such as Enjolras and Combeferre; Courfeyrac and Grantaire, he finds himself lonely. “It would be good for me to go,” he tries, “I can always come home if I feel unwell.”

His mother purses her lips. Her concern for him has two sides, and they are vying for dominance, he knows. She wishes for his safety, but also for his happiness.

“Well, I'm sure Father would let me go.”

The moment he says it, he regrets it. His mother's lips tighten until they are white and wrinkled, and her thin eyebrows compress. Jehan knows, of course he knows, that this is his ace card; his mother is in no way inclined to question the authority of her husband, and even if that authority is entirely hypothetical, it is sure at least to give her pause. Sure enough, Lady Oakham picks up her glass of orange juice, takes a few slow, delicate sips before setting it down again, and says at length:

“I am very worried about you, Jehan. Mr Knowe was very clear about the fact that you ought to rest. I don't like the idea of you overexerting yourself.”

“I won't,” he avers, widening his eyes earnestly, “I promise.”

His mother deliberates. Jehan finds that he cannot make himself sit still under the intentness of her gaze. He is aware of being measured in some way; he realises now that his forceful desire to return to school has very little to do with boredom and far more to do with the fact that so long as he remains safely ensconced in his bed, he is still half a child, whilst the rest of his friends are almost men. Already, he feels he is walking five steps behind them. And how, how might he hope to change that if he is spending his days in his room, speaking little and learning even less?

“Very well, then,” his mother concedes with a put-upon sigh, as though she is being made to do something quite unpleasant or untoward, “I suppose perhaps it may do you good. You may return to school tomorrow. But please, dear, don't go if you do not feel up to it.”

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

The knock at Feuilly's door surprises him – it is the first time Jehan has come to visit him since his fall at the top of the servants' staircase. Having run out of things to read – and having, therefore, nothing with which to occupy his mind – Feuilly has had more time than he might have done in which to turn over each and every awful possibility, each terrible 'what if?' in his head. He is, therefore, full of happy surprise at the quick, light sound of the knock, and springs up to open the door.

Jehan is in his school uniform, just as on any other morning, but his eyes are ringed with tired shadows, and he is very pale. Feuilly's sense of relief ebbs a little.

“Jehan,” he says quietly, “What are you doing?”

“Going to school,” comes the other boy's cheerful rejoinder. He holds out a book for Feuilly to take; it is a Marlowe play. “I'm sorry I haven't been to see you; I haven't been well.”

“I know,” Feuilly replies, taking the book and putting it away carefully beneath the thin mattress. “I were – I was trying to think of a reason to go upstairs so I could see if you was alright, but I couldn't think of anything.” He pauses, and then cannot help adding - “You are alright, now, aren't you?”

Jehan nods. “Oh, yes,” he says.

Feuilly remains unconvinced, but he says nothing more. For what can he say, really? It is not for him to question the wisdom of his friend's return to school.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

By lunchtime, Jehan is beginning to wish that he had never asked to return to school. His breath seems to catch sharply every time he moves, and he weaves his way dizzily through the milling crowd of boys, planting his feet carefully one in front of the other as though any misstep might send the world rushing up to meet him.

He is the last to sit down at the usual table, arriving later even than Grantaire.

“Oh, good,” says Courfeyrac, brightly, “You're better.” Then, making a show of scrutinising him. “Only, you don't really look better. Are you alright, Prouvaire?”

“Oh, yes,” Jehan nods dutifully, “Quite alright.”

But his friends are eyeing him concernedly, and he wishes fervently that they would stop and resume their conversation.

“I'm alright,” he repeats, rather uncharacteristically testy. He is tired, so very tired, of how everyone flutters about him. He would like to be just the same as everyone else; is that so difficult? They must think him frail; they must think him a mere baby. He cannot stand the thought.

“I'm sorry,” he amends after a moment, stumblingly, “I didn't mean – I'm only tired. That is, I'm not so very tired, but – anyway, I didn't mean to speak so sharply.”

“It's all right, Jehan,” says Combeferre, quietly. He manages a small smile, but his grey eyes have still a troubled look in them.

The conversation patters onward. Today, the topic is Grantaire's elder brother, who is going off to fight in the war. Grantaire already seems to suppose that he will die, and is waxing loquacious over the varying degrees of absurdity with which their family is sure to mourn him (“Oh, and you can be sure that at his funeral, they will invite people who did not even know him...”)

At this, Combeferre looks up sharply.

“Grantaire,” his voice is tight, “It isn't - ” and steady, sure Combeferre has to stop himself, voice trembling slightly, before going on: “It isn't prudent to joke about death, like that.”

And Grantaire, recognising his mistake but feeling reluctant, perhaps, to apologise outright, remains silent.

It happens when the lunch monitor sounds the bell with a shrill little chime and they all must rise to return to their lessons. Jehan stands, takes a few steps – and his legs give out. He falls forward, making, unlike the time at the top of the servants' staircase, no attempt to catch himself. He lands prone and still, and Courfeyrac lets out a cry of surprised alarm.

Combeferre, eyes very wide, is frozen. He cannot make himself move to kneel beside his friend, much as he wants to. It is a strange feeling, this powerless, new and yet familiar all at once. He watches Enjolras crouch beside the younger boy, turning him gently onto his back.

Jehan's chest rises and falls shallowly; his breath comes in little gasps. He is so very pale, and so very still.

“He's cold,” Enjolras murmurs, perhaps to himself. Then, more loudly: “Combeferre, please fetch one of the schoolmasters, now.”

But Combeferre does not move, and when he opens his mouth to speak, no sound emerges. In the end, it is Courfeyrac who rushes off to find a teacher.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

Jehan wakes in the headmaster's office, with his mother beside him, leaning over him anxiously. Upon the instant that he opens his eyes, she immediately bursts into very noisy tears.

He is weak – he had not known how weak he truly was; how could this have happened so quickly? - scarcely strong enough, indeed, to lift his head.

“I'm alright, Mother,” he says vaguely, “Really, I'm alright.”

“You are not alright!” Lady Oakham's voice begins to climb hysterically, “I knew this was a terrible idea! I knew it was – I oughtn't have let you go! And now – oh – oh -” and her words are lost in fresh sobs.

Jehan blinks, not being able, in his current state, to understand his mother's distress.

“Nothing hurts,” he says, “Not really. I'm just tired.” He had said something similar to his friends, earlier, he remembers.

This does nothing whatsoever to reassure Lady Oakham, whose weeping only becomes more voluble than ever. “Oh,” she cries, “Oh...oh...”

And Jehan, suddenly, is afraid.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

At home, he is put promptly to bed, and the apothecary is sent for once again. As before, his apprentices wait with Jehan whilst Mr Knowe speaks with his mother, downstairs.

“I don't know what all the fuss is about,” says Jehan, sleepily, once the adults have gone.

“Fuss?” Joly blanches, “You are very ill, Jehan! Very, very ill. Everyone is worried about you. What if you -”

But here, Lesgles cuts in:

“Oh, do stop it, Joly.” Then, to Jehan, “You're alright, or you will be, anyway. You know what Joly's like, by now, don't you? Regular mother hen.” But he too, for all his smiles, wears the same look of concern as everyone else, and Jehan cannot help but wonder if, perhaps, there is something they are not telling him.

“Why were you so keen to go back to school, anyway?” Lesgles asks, and Jehan supposes that it must look quite odd, his being so insistent on the matter.

“Well, I was quite bored,” he says, “And lonely, too.”

“You had us for company,” Joly points out, “Sometimes.”

He is quite right. Jehan is about to tell him so when the bedroom door opens suddenly and Feuilly, looking breathless and harried himself, steps inside.

“'Scuse me,” he mumbles, “I know I en't supposed to be here, but – I heard – they're all talking about it below stairs, you see. Jehan, are you alright? Yer not, are you?” He looks so terribly anxious, pulling and tugging at the hem of his shirt.

“Who're you?” enquires Lesgles, not unkindly, and Feuilly ducks his head.

“I'm just the hallboy,” he murmurs into his collar, at precisely the same moment that Jehan says:

“He's my friend.”

Lesgles and Joly take only a moment to cover their surprise.

“Well, how d'you do,” says Joly, pleasantly, “I'm Thomas Joly -”

“- And I am Joseph Lesgles.”

Feuilly's lips twitch in a barely suppressed smile at these boys' manner of speaking; the way they seem to finish one another's sentences like characters in a story. Presently, however, he seems to remember why he is here, and his expression becomes grave, again.

“Henry Feuilly,” he says, rather hastily, and then, to Jehan: “What happened?”

“I fell again. In school,” Jehan is not sure quite what else to say. He has no wish to worry his friend, and what else, indeed, could he say. “It isn't anything serious.”

“I'll know if yer lying to me, you know,” Feuilly is suddenly fierce, “The servants all talk, you know. Someone'll tell me.”

But Jehan is resolute, and will have nothing more said on the matter.

So they talk, instead, of other things. Lesgles tells a story of some chickens his family owned, and how they escaped from their pen to run about the street, and Lesgles and his neighbour had to run madly after them. They all laugh at this, and, too, at Joly's tale of a friend of his father's who had once been in a travelling circus, and who swears that he can charm snakes and swallow fire. (“Imagine that!”) Indeed, they almost manage to forget all of their troubles until the return of Lady Oakham and Mr Knowe.

“Come along, then,” says Mr Knowe to his apprentices, raising a thin eyebrow at their merry faces. “I shall be seeing you soon, young Master Prouvaire. Rest well, now.”

Then he is gone, taking Joly and Lesgles with him.

Feuilly is positively horrified, it is clear, at having been found conversing with the young master of Oakham House. Head ducked and shoulders hunched, he struggles to meet Lad Oakham's eyes, remembering with awful clarity the circumstances of their last meeting. It is perhaps a mark of the seriousness of the situation that she has no remonstration for him.

“I think Bess is looking for you, Feuilly,” is all she says, gently, “There are things to be done in the kitchen.”

Feuilly gives quick, wordless nod and backs out of the room hastily.

“I have written to your father,” Lady Oakham says to Jehan in a quavering voice, “I have told him to come home directly. We will get you well again.”

And now, Jehan realises with a dull cold thrill, he is more afraid than ever.


End file.
